Not to toot my own horn but I’ve been known to put together some pretty great poster presentations. Some people think that you have to be a professional graphic designer in order to produce a high quality presentation but that is absolutely not true. I am going to give you a few tips to make those presentations pop:
1. Plan first. Visualizing is awesome but having it on paper is better. Draw out your presentation before you dare to put it on . If you are good with technology, create a mock up online with the same pictures and wording that you want to use on you actual presentation.
2. Pay attention to quality. If you are Google-ing images to use, my advice is to go to Search Tools > Size> Large and select a large image.
If you select a small image and try to increase the size, the quality will become grainy and distorted.
3. Avoid using full paragraphs. You don’t want your audience to spend more time reading than listening. (UNLESS you are making a scientific poster and it is required)
4. Be consistent. Use the same font and size for all of your headings and words. Also, use an easily read font. Try to stay away from fonts that are too wide or too narrow.
5. Be neat! I totally understand if you are in a time crunch and have to glue as you walk out of the door. However, if you can spare the time, take an X acto and cut out your items and precisely cut out your words in strips instead of gluing full sheets of paper to your board.
6. My personal favorite tip: Don’t be afraid to have your project printed! I’m certainly not. I’m great with computers but I don’t have a very steady hand. For my most recent presentation, I designed the poster using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I then sent my file to Staples and had it printed for what it would have cost for me to buy all of the supplies to make it by hand.
Overall, creating awesome, effective posters isn’t hard. You just have to plan it out, use quality images and arrange it neatly. If you need any more tips, just let me know!
My most recent poster presentation:
